Within modern communication systems, phase detection is an important aspect of recovering data from received data streams. Typically, a phase locked loop (PLL) type of circuit design is utilized to generate an output signal having a phase that is related to the phase of an incoming data stream. The output signal generated by the PLL or other functionally equivalent or similar circuit such as a Numerically Controlled Oscillator (NCO) can be used to synchronize data recovery units and/or clock units with the incoming data stream. Once synchronization is achieved, data within the incoming data stream can be recovered or extracted.
Burst phase detectors refer to a type of phase detector that can be used to extract data from a data stream that exhibits large swings in the phase of the data that is begin transmitted. A given data stream, for example, can include data from two or more different transmitting units, each sending data with a very different phase. As a result, the receiving unit sees an incoming data stream with data that appears to exhibit substantially instantaneous changes in the phase of the data, e.g., between the end of data from one transmitting unit and the beginning of data from another transmitting unit. Modern phase detection systems must be able to adjust for these large swings in phase to properly extract data from the received data stream.